Modes of movement, transport and delivery of goods are changing, as can be seen for instance with respect to canned or bottled beverages. It has been common for many years to lift individual cases of beverage cans or bottles and to move them on a two-wheeled dolly or hand truck. This would be carried out by a delivery person who would manually reach into a truck, and repeatedly lift and stack several cases on a hand truck. The delivery person then would tilt the hand truck and roll it by pushing or pulling the hand truck to move the goods into a retail establishment, where they would be unloaded by lifting the cases from the hand truck and stacking them on a floor surface or shelves. This is a very labor intensive and highly repetitive job, due to the size of the packages that must be moved by the individual when lifting, and when trying to transport them on the hand truck. This method of moving goods also can put the operator and goods at risk of injury due to the bending, lifting, pushing and pulling. Also, when on the hand truck, the heavy, tall and slender load can become unstable, hard to control and possibly fall to the ground, or onto the delivery person or other persons or objects nearby.
In more recent years, merchandising and delivery of goods has ushered in new ways of moving and displaying goods. For instance, several individual items, such as cases of canned or bottled beverages, may be loaded onto a pallet of reduced size that can be used for delivering and storing or displaying the goods in a retail establishment. The reduced size pallets may range in width from approximately 15-24 inches, in length from approximately 36-48 inches, and in height from approximately 6-15 inches. The use of such relatively narrow pallets permits passage through conventional doorways while carrying a much larger quantity of goods in a given trip between a delivery vehicle and a final destination. The pallets may be of various lengths and can be loaded at manufacturing facilities or distribution centers, to reduce or avoid having the delivery person do any lifting of individual items. Moreover, a variety of goods may be combined to create custom palletized orders, while the pallets may be moved by more conventional forklifts or pallet trucks when moving about manufacturing and distribution facilities and when loading a delivery vehicle. Such pallets may be individually lifted by a cart that can be pushed or pulled by a delivery person to transport the goods from a delivery vehicle to a final destination. This results in a great increase in the amount of product that an individual delivery person can move, in a safer manner, thereby also reducing the frequency or number of cycles traversed between the vehicle and the final location for the goods within each delivery visit. The reduced size of the pallet also allows the pallets to be moved lengthwise through doorways and to be used as noted above in merchandising displays without having to unload the pallet and stock the goods on individual shelves.
This disclosure sets forth several alternative apparatus and methods of using the same that overcome shortcomings in the prior art.